IndiePulse Interviews: Charly: Singer, Musician and Composer

Charly is a French Singer, Musician and Composer based in Los Angeles, California, USA. Always aware that she wanted to be an active creator in the musical realm, she started to sing and play guitar during her childhood.

After high school, she diverged from her path as a dentist and gravitated to the Arts. She earned a Bachelor degree in Art and Communication at the ICART in Paris, France and dove right into the music industry, working at record labels, concerts venues and festivals organizations.

She quickly realized she needed more and didn’t just want help other artists to develop their projects. She wanted to develop her own. Since she always sang in English, she decided to take her chance in LA where she has been established for the last four years.

While she is part of several bands like “Charly&Faust” and “The Sutra”, she is now releasing her third EP called “Awareness “, produced by Eric Reymond and herself. On this EP she got the chance to collaborate with Coralie Hervé (Drums, percussions), Eric Reymond (Bass, Artistic Producer), Andrew Tokko (Lead Guitar on “Leave It”), Jefferson Fichou (Lead Guitar on “What’s Next?”, “Creature of Your Nights” and “Someday”) and Gerhard Westphalen (Mixing, Mastering).

In Our Exclusive Interview, we gathered some insight and learned more about this exceptional artist and what she sees as a bountiful journey through Music.

IPM: What inspired you to write music like you do?

Most of the time, my lyrics and melodies are inspired by things I experienced or that I am experiencing at the moment in my life. For the instrumental parts, it is just a mix of what I have been listening as a teenager and what I am listening today. For the lyrics parts, I mostly focus on stuff I lived or what I saw and still see around me or in the news. Let’s say, that few years ago I got this sensation I couldn’t write anymore because I was finally happy in my life. I quickly realized that if I was looking around me our society and world was fucked up and that I should start focusing on more than myself!

IPM: Tell us about your “Band” or should we say, you Musical Companions?

Charly isn’t really a band. It is more a collaboration between amazing and talented people that were crazy enough to follow me in this adventure.

We are now working on “What’s Next?” music video with the awesome Zoé Pelloux (Producer). We just finished shooting it with Caio Slikta (Illustrator) and Benjamin Shultz (Cinematographer). Fernanda Schein is now editing it. It should be released in few weeks now.

On stage, I decided to have a restricted team for now. So, it will be just Eric Reymond (Bass, Backing Vocals), Coralie Hervé (Drums, Backing Vocals) and I (Rhythm Guitar, Lead Vocals). We are already playing together in a band called “Charly&Faust”, so we have this special connection that we build months after months. That is why I wanted them with me on stage. We know already how to play together. I mean, we are still learning, but we already know each other enough to understand what is going on on stage when we play together.

We are now working with Emily Daccarett on the clothes design part. I am so honored to work with her on that. I am really excited to see the result.

IPM: What are or were some of the challenges for you in producing or performing while keeping true to your vision of your music.

We are no one in the music industry. So the hardest part is probably to stick to the music you love and your idea while trying to understand and apply advises from professionals. It is hard to make the difference between a real advice that we help you develop your project and a comment that was made just to say something or to tell you that you are not commercial enough.

IPM: Tell us about some of your recent shows / performances.

We perform a lot with our band “Charly & Faust”, but with this project we are just started. We will play for the first time on May 26th 2018 at Molly Malone’s Irish Pub, Los Angeles, CA. Come see us .

IPM: Any Albums coming out soon or shows you are looking to promote

Charly’s third EP “Awareness” just got released and is available on every digital platforms (Deezer, Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, etc.) and the music video for “What’s Next?” will be out in few weeks now. We will start to perform this project on stage in and around LA really soon now. We will be playing at Molly Malones on May 26th and we will perform an acoustic set at Republic of Pie on June 28th.

IPM:Any “strange tales” or things that may have happened during a show that seemed too weird to be true?

Well, probably, but we are kind of strange people in this project so it might have seemed normal to us even if it was supposed to be weird!

IPM:Where do you see your music going, where would you like to be in the near future, goals, dreams and passions?

I don’t know… Ideally it would be great to have more people discovering and enjoying this project. It would help us to perform more on stage. The main goal is just to continue doing what we love. If we can get some professional helps to make our journey easier it would be awesome, but anyway with or without we will continue because it is our passion and what makes us happy.

IPM: What would you like our readers to know about you?

My sense of humor is horrible, come make fun of it at our shows *laughs*